A schoolboy has been given approval to start changing into a woman – provided he has his sperm frozen in case he decides to ‘father’ children some time in the future.

The extraordinary and controversial case has emerged in Australia where a female judge in the Family Court has given the 16-year-old boy the go-ahead to start drug treatment in the first steps to his conversion into womanhood.

Judge Linda Dessau said the teenager, who is mildly autistic, was mature enough to know what he wanted – and he had the support of his parents, six specialists and a lawyer.

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported today (Wed) that the boy, identified only as ‘O’ comes from a loving family who ‘adore and respect him’.

He also had the support of his 14-year-old sister, in whose clothes he has been secretly dressing up in.

The judge said the boy was so desperate to become a girl that he had become suicidal and had once taken the extreme step of swallowing lead solder at his school.

Added to the unusual case was the judge’s observation that the boy’s father had also enjoyed dressing up as a girl but he had said that he ‘grew out of it’.

The parents of O thought he would also grow out of his obsession of dressing up as a girl but that did not happen.

When he was 14 he told his parents that he was revolted by his male body.

It is not the first time that an Australian court has created controversy by allowing a minor to start hormone treatment to change sex.

Six years ago the Family Court granted permission for a 13-year-old girl identified only as ‘Alex’ – who came from a troubled family – to start treatment to become a man.

Then last year Alex, by then aged 17, was given permission to have a double mastectomy.

For most of us, the terrible 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was a disaster that we reflect on as the years drift by – but for a number of mothers in Indonesia every day is a day to remember.

Six years after the tidal wave claimed 230,000 lives in 12 countries, those mothers cling to hope that their lost children are still alive.

They believe that the youngsters were swept ashore many miles from their homes and were then adopted by families who had lost their own children.

Among the hopefuls is a 43-year-old mother who today lies in a hospital with severe injuries, suffered when a mob of villagers attacked her as she tried to interview a girl she believed was her missing daughter.

The sad story of Titik Yuniarti’s search for her daughter Salwa, who was aged six when she was swept from her arms when an undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered the tsunami, typifies the search that scores of other mothers have embarked on in the hope of finding their lost loved ones.

Titik said from her hospital bed in the Indonesian region of Aceh, which was the most badly hit area among all the countries from Sri Lanka to Indonesia and Thailand, that she had a dream telling her that her daughter had been found alive and was with a family in the town of Langsa.

With a friend, she travelled for six hours along a bumpy coastal road before going from school to school showing teachers and students photos of her daughter.

‘After three days, we finally met a girl named Febby,’ Titik said, her face covered in bruises, an intravenous drip in her arm.

‘She had the same tumble of black hair, a freckle over her lip. Some people even told me she’d lost her parents in the tsunami and had been adopted.

‘I was still afraid to believe it, but in my heart I thought “it’s her – it’s really her.”‘

But when she and her friend returned to a village where they had met the girl, a mob was waiting for her and accused her of wanting to abduct the 12-year-old to sell her organs.

‘Some people shouted “Hang her! Hang her!’ and others set alight the building where we had been staying,’ said Titik.

Then the mob beat them with sticks and rocks before police arrived and arranged for them to be taken to hospital.

The girl’s mother, Ainun Mardiah, said she would be happy to take a DNA test to prove that the child is her’s, not Titik’s.

Titik’s desperate hunt for a daughter who was lost in the tsunami is just one sad case among many, say officials of Indonesia’s Social Ministry office.

‘A government programme that reunited nearly 1,600 children with their parents closed in 2006,’ said Farida Zuraini, a ministry spokeswoman. ‘We offer assistance as needed but the number of requests has dwindled.’

The death toll rises by the hour; local people weep and hug one another as a woman slips beneath the waves; the Prime Minister, the navy, customs officials are accused of having blood on their hands.
In the wake of this unspeakable horror on Christmas Island – and how poignant a name at this time of the year – accusing fingers are being pointed everywhere.
They shouldn’t have come, say those who believe the asylum seekers should have remained in Iraq and Iran. The navy should have stopped the boat before it reached the treacherous rocks in wild seas, say others.
And then there is the woman at the top – Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Is it her fault…is her Labour Party’s ‘open door’ policy for asylum seekers the reason this group of between 80 and 100 desperate people headed for Australia to start a new and happy life?
Only a full inquiry will provide the answers and there is no doubt one will be called.
In the meantime we can only pause and reflect on the terror those people faced at the very end of their long journey. They could never have imaged that the freedom they longed for, freedom that was literally only a few meters away, would have ended in cries of terror as the rocks smashed their flimsy wooden boat to pieces and the waves engulfed them.
‘It is heart-stopping,’ said one resident as she watched people struggling in the wild sea. ‘It’s carnage, a terrible tragedy.
‘The sea is awash. None of us can get out to rescue them from the shore. It took a customs boat ages to get to them.’
Mr Simon Foster, an island resident, told the West Australian newspaper from a cliff overlooking the crash site that the boat was upside down in the sea and debris was scattered across the surface of the Indian Ocean.
‘It seems the boat crashed into jagged rocks below the cliffs as it tried to land at Flying Fish Cove.’
Mr Foster said the seas were as rough as he had seen in many months, and it was through the wild weather that the boat had attempted to land at Flying Fish Cove, the only landing point on the island for vessels.
‘There is so much stuff in the water that you can’t tell what is debris and what is people.
‘I have heard that a navy boat was cruising around picking people out of water but it it’s hard to tell what’s going on. I definitely would not want to be out in that water at the moment whether you were in the water or in a boat – it’s shocking out there’
Mr Kamar Ismaill, a local councillor, rushed to the cliff top and saw at least two or three bodies in the water.
‘We were throwing out ropes and lifejackets but no-one could grab on to the ropes.
‘I saw children hanging onto the side of the boat, just holding on.
‘There were others hanging on to rocks and what was left of the boat.
‘Wave after wave was coming in and it was very, very rough. The rocks were very jagged and it’s a very steep area around there.
‘It was just a horrible situation, just so sad.’
Hundreds of asylum seekers have made their way to Australia in the past year, most from Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka.